


Not this one

by psychicmewhealer



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Alien Planet, Aliens, Angst, Apocalypse, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Don't Judge, Don't Read This, Dying planet, Dyson Sphere, Everyone is Dead, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Loneliness, POV Male Character, POV Original Character, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Limited, Please Don't Hate Me, Please Don't Kill Me, Sad, Sad Ending, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Social Commentary, Stupidity, The Author Regrets Everything, Theremin, This Is STUPID, This is Bad, destroy planet, happiness is a lie, planet destroy, planet dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24411634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychicmewhealer/pseuds/psychicmewhealer
Summary: An alien reflects on the impending death of his planet.--Or: me incomprehensibly whining about socially acceptable notions of happiness.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Not this one

“I know it’s hard, Mu. I know it’s hard for you. But it’s great in there. For everyone. For all of us.”

Mu ended the video. That was the last thing Nagh had said before he left. His long, red locks unmoving, round photoreceptors artificially sparkling.

Of course he left: Mu should have known better. Nagh was a pleasure junkie. There was nothing to entertain him. Why not leave?

Another ad popped into Mu’s vision. He closed it before reading a word. He knew what the ad was about.

About the Sphere that covered the sun, gathering its power, that would save the galaxy from resource depletion. About how the galaxy had been running out of resources for hundreds of years. How the Sphere possesses the power to house YOUR consciousness for FREE so you won’t deplete any resources and inevitably die a bodily death. The Sphere that would give eternal happiness to those locked inside. The Sphere that granted eternal life. If life were euphoria.

Mu could look straight towards the sun and not see it. The Sphere blocked it.

Mu looked down and cried. He ran through a list of friends he could speak to about his problem as the obnoxious Reminders app told him. After, of course, he had rummaged through the registry and stopped it from telling him to buy euphorics.

Je, Ty’e, Gunn, Dah, Nu, Li, Xe’m. His only friends. A thinker could only have so many. They had all left, dead in the Sphere, being fed happiness that meant nothing.

Mu dusted a theremin he found in his closet. His only friend at the moment. Inching his hand towards its pitch-controlling antenna, he managed a squawking sound from it and cursed. He lifted his hand to control the theremin’s volume antenna. Another squawking sound and another curse.

But then he realized something ― he was imagining the sun under the Sphere. He did not know exactly what it looked like. So he could not make a sound on the theremin.

He paid attention to the lights shining from his photoreceptors. How it reflected on each object. How the rationed water refracted. Which theremin parts were visible and which weren’t.

When he lifted his hand and played, a tragic song poured out. Of loss and sadness and hopelessness. Of what he felt. Of being alone. Of being the last living person on the planet.

He thought of those things. He thought of them and cried, wasting precious water on himself.

His tears did not break the theremin. Rather, it left it working so he could explicate his tears through the music that was his heart.

The heart the Sphere did not have.

Swiping away the ads, counting down the minutes the planet would blow. He could leave the planet any second. He could do it. But he didn’t. He stayed strong. The last minutes of his life ― the only minutes of his life ― would have meaning.

The planet imploded.


End file.
